Vaccinating Lambs

Years ago, when I first vaccinated lambs, I thought about the needles.

I sweated, tried not to shake or think about it too much as I pierced their skin with the needle.

After administering hundreds of vaccines, I'm over that.

Now, I think about the fat.

The ram lambs are vaccinated with the CDT (enterotoxemia types C and D and tetanus) vaccine when they become wethers at about 10 days old. They are given a booster vaccine about 3-4 weeks later. We usually give the ewe lambs their first vaccines at this time.

To administer the vaccine, I pinch the skin behind the elbow and inject the needle under the skin. It's easy to do on the plump, 60-day-old lambs.

It's harder on the 60-day-old bottle lambs, like the one below.

While she's healthy and thriving, she doesn't have the extra layer of fat that her nursing pasture mates have. The other difficult ones were Good Mom's triplets.

A month younger than most of the other lambs, they haven't filled out yet.

When we give boosters to the ewe lambs in 3-4 weeks, I again will be focusing on the fat and their size, as most will have outgrown human laps by then.